Friday, May 20, 2016

Two Poems in PN Review issue 229


File it under private victories.

Two poems accepted for PN Review is victory enough; one 'Waiting Broken Echoes Fading' a poem I've been tinkering with for probably a decade, the other  a version of Wulf and Eadwacer an Old English poem that I first tried translating when I was an Undergraduate.


But....One of the main reasons I studied Medieval Literature and History in the first place was that sometime in the 1970s I found a copy of Michael Alexander's translations of Old English Poetry in that classic Penguin Classics collection. I'd already read his translation of Beowulf and was hooked.

And now, all these years later,  the only attempt at 'translation' of an OE poem I'd put my name to in public is published in PN Review alongside an article by the same Michael Alexander, which he begins by discussing how he came to write those translations. 

One is awed.  Sometimes things do go right.  Start up the happy dance.....

2 comments:

Caroline M Davies said...

Many congratulations Liam.

Liam Guilar said...

Caroline, thank you. I"m so used to getting rejection letters from PN Review that when I opened the envelope I read the first line and tossed the letter. Then I thought perhaps I should read the whole thing.....(-: